Last year, Neil Young finally released his 1975 "lost" album, Homegrown, but his vaults are not done giving us unearthed treasures.
"We have recently found a collection of originals from 1987 named 'Summer Songs' at the time of recording," writes Neil writes on his Archives site. "That time was about 35 years ago. We are not sure of the exact original dates of these recordings yet. They were all given the same date in the NYA Vault's records, but they all have a very similar unique sound. To give you an idea of place and time, Farm Aid and the Bridge School Concerts had just begun their long runs."
Neil goes on to say: "This group of songs had just been written and put down in the studio at Broken Arrow (as far as we can figure). We cannot completely be sure of the engineer who was recording these and I don't remember the sessions at all! Every song in the collection was with acoustic guitar or piano and simple added embellishments - sketches of arrangements we made to preserve the initial ideas."
According to Neil, the versions of "The Last of His Kind," "For the Love of Man," "American Dream," "Name of Love," "Someday," "One of These Days," "Hangin' on a Limb" and "Wrecking Ball" feature lyrics that are "significantly different from their subsequent master album releases in many cases. Several completely new and unheard verses are found in the songs of this collection."
Young notes that these originals -- which ended up in their final master versions on the albums Freedom, American Dream, Psychedelic Pill and Harvest Moon. -- will appear on the third volume of his NYA box set series, but may see the light of day before that as their own Archive album. "It is a beautiful listen, created over a short period of time, that influenced 4 albums," Neil writes.
"Research is still being done to completely verify the recording history," Neil says in conclusion. Stay tuned. Watch Neil play "The Last of His Kind" at Farm Aid '87 below.
Meanwhile, Neil Young & Crazy Horse's new album, Barn, is out next week, and back in October he released Carnegie Hall 1970, which is the first in his Bootleg series.
You can pick up classic Neil Young albums on vinyl in the BV shop.
